I have a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 5160 with what I was told was a bad LCD. One day the screen showed vertical lines and then went dark. That was two years ago. Roughly 6 to 8 months prior to the dark screen Dell replaced the motherboard due to an overheating issue.
This week on a whim I decided to see if I could connect the laptop to an external monitor. The external monitor didn't work but the screen did! It booted into WindowsXP and then slowly went dark. I still have a heat/power supply problem so I shut down the computer and let it cool down before booting into safe mode. I am able to see the screen in safe mode and although it has vertical lines that flicker, it is fairly stable. I was even able to connect to the internet to download new video drivers and run a malware bytes scan.
When I reboot with the new driver installed it looked perfect! It only lasted a few minutes before going dark again. I decided to run a pre-boot scan and noticed it is failing at the LCD connection test. I played with the screen a bit, pulling the top right corner of the screen toward me and pushing the left bottom corner away from me. Although it was a simple blue screen with white letters they were once again perfect.
Does this sound like the LCD is bad or there is simply a loose connection?
This week on a whim I decided to see if I could connect the laptop to an external monitor. The external monitor didn't work but the screen did! It booted into WindowsXP and then slowly went dark. I still have a heat/power supply problem so I shut down the computer and let it cool down before booting into safe mode. I am able to see the screen in safe mode and although it has vertical lines that flicker, it is fairly stable. I was even able to connect to the internet to download new video drivers and run a malware bytes scan.
When I reboot with the new driver installed it looked perfect! It only lasted a few minutes before going dark again. I decided to run a pre-boot scan and noticed it is failing at the LCD connection test. I played with the screen a bit, pulling the top right corner of the screen toward me and pushing the left bottom corner away from me. Although it was a simple blue screen with white letters they were once again perfect.
Does this sound like the LCD is bad or there is simply a loose connection?
